First off let me start of be claiming that I am the be all and end all Starfox fan. I've barley touched the last two cube games but the original Starfox on SNES and Lylat Wars on Nintendo 64 were probably the second most played games I've ever bought. I revelled in the awesomeness that was the "Super-FX" chipped game of Starfox as he cruised around the universe ready to kick some Andross tail. The fact you could loose only one of your wings which would the effect how your Arwing handled was awesome and still stands to prove that the SNES was fucking awesome aside. Having said that I creamed my little boy pants when I learned of Lylat Wars. OMG, I get wood just thinking about the time I first started it up. It continued the story of Fox and his barnyard buddies kicking ass all over again. The Multiplayer I pwned at, no one could touch me. 3D dog fights against star wolf and crew barely lasted 3 miss I was that god damn good. 3D dogfights in an ARWING for crying out loud. Only gay-homo-Nazis would shunt at such a thing. But I digress back into better days, where games were bought by mum and I could play them as much as I liked.So there was a little bit of anticipation when I heard Fox and his buddies where coming to the Nintendo DS in old skool piloting form.(there's a whole back story why I never touched the cube games, which mainly involves Fox selling out into a gay platforming adventure game with scarab bags and the like, defiantly not the ass kicking Fox I remember from the SNES days) So I eagerly shelled out some virtual cash and imported it from the USA cause I hate waiting for local releases, and then eagerly clicked it into my DS.
As I sat though the opening sequence I realised that I must have missed a fair bit of plot from the previous games that I refused to get. Fox has changed, he's got himself a she-fox-bitch and seems to have spent the better part of the last 3 years chasing her down, ditching her off and then begging her to come back only to do it again. Oh, why fox why? As I found out the Lylat system has once again been plunged into the evil vice like grips of not one but a few villains nowadays and because the army of the solar system are such skirt wearing pussies they ask you to help (and there's no mention of a reward mind you). Reluctantly Fox takes the higher (and gayer) moral decision and agree to help. But oh no, he's friendless after his last encounter. Somehow Pippy has become General (and aged poorly), Slippy is married and Falco is off doing he's whingy Falco things. So your mission is to get your buddies and go kick some rainbow coloured crap out of some bad guys.The story is presented in some kind of weird touch screen comic book thingo which works well if you can be bothered reading it. The graphics in the game really let me down. I was expecting at least something around the 64 version but I ended up with not much better than the SNES debut. Sure it had is charm. Low poly count ships and enemies made for the arena's to be huge, but that's about it. Foolishly I was also thinking there would be voice overs, there's not. It's SNES animalese for you as well, so get liking it. It's presented nicely on the screen though, and really after about 15 mins you'll be so caught up in not getting blown out of the sky you won't really notice the poor, poor graphics.
But the games are all about the game play. So you fly around area's and kill stuff looking for cores, but before you get to do that fun stuff you have to work a turn based system of flying you planes on a map. It's 2D top down view and you drag you stylus in a like from your Great Fox ship to your enemies squads or the Base, hopefully picking up goodies like bombs, shields or extra turns in the process. Now this is where the whole shemozzle is floored. See there's Fog of war and you have to use your stylus to rub it out, but it re-grows after every turn and all manner of nasties come out that you can't see. You have to protect the great fox from being attacked from squads or missiles and it's a lot harder than it sounds. Sometimes it's going to take careful planning and intercepting an missiles route to finish the level. And after 10 turns to see that son of a bitch great fox go down will have you screaming obscenities like nun that's just been laid. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.An interesting aspect of the game is that it's controlled entirely but the DS's Stylus. Something that seems un necessary and sometimes annoying. You get used to it, but it takes some time to get accurate. Me thinks is was a gimmicky thing to throw in and the worst part is you can't turn it back to the D-Pad. Controlling with the stylus makes things a bit more accurate but barrel rolls, loops, uturns and bombs are all poorly implemented. It could have defiantly used some polish or re-thinking to work perfectly.
Eventually you'll get to control all your team mates as well, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. For instance that fat bastard Slippy, the fast selfish and oh so gay frog, has the ultimate guns but bugger all shields and is prone to getting ass raped, while Fox would do more damage hitting enemies with his cock than his lasers. But they won't fight along side you at the same time, WTF. There's no on rail shooters, the only thing comes close is when you have to take out a missile (which will annoy the fuck out of you). Gone are the glory days of the old skool star fox, this bitch is completely 3D dogfights, and as cool at that sounds it's not really any substitute for the Lylat Wars.
The Story has a branching paths system, so once you finish it once and get the hilarious fox crying ending (as testament on how gay he has become) you can go back and take all new choices and see how you end up. You can ever get to pilot the Star Wolf gang this way and if you look on line you can unlock nearly 10 different endings. All relatively different to get to, and by different I mean choices. Don't be fooled, it's really just the same levels over and over again with the occasional Boss Battle thrown in, and Bosses are few and far between. However once you get though the story mode once it's not that bad, you can find them if you look for them.Starfox Command isn't a long game, all in all I've gotten through about 60% of the story's and i've played it 4 or so hours. If you take out the time it takes to mess around a bit you could knock off another hours. The first story mode should be done in a little under 2 hours. Apparently the game is playable online, something I've yet to test with my new modem, but I also have no desire to take my uber skillz against others. Online games don't really do much for me, (besides my WoW habit that I've kicked). It just would have been nice if Nintendo had at least tried to breath some new life into the series with out wrecking it, perhaps with some kind of awesome keioken attack or something. I don't know really what I want but I know it's not an entire game based around the best bit of a Nintendo 64 game.
So what did I think of Starfox Command for Nintendo DS?
As much as I've ragged on it in the review it is kind of late. So to be fair I'll give it a solid 70/100. If it wasn't Starfox it would be getting less and if you like online play you can schmako on another five points. I expected more Nintendo. The cartridge will be lucky to see the light of day again.